ProfNet Experts Available on Office Hazards, Cybercrime, More

NEW YORK, April 1, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Below are experts from the ProfNet network that are available to discuss timely issues in your coverage area. If you are interested in interviewing any of the experts, please contact them via the contact information at the end of the listing. To receive these updates by email, send a note to [email protected] with the industries you cover, and we'll add you to the appropriate edition.

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EXPERT ALERTS

Homebuyers Beware in a Flipper's Market

Telltale Signs Your Office is a Health Hazard

Protecting Your Company From Infiltration and Theft

MEDIA JOBS

Healthcare Reporter - Bloomberg News (NY)

Staff Writer - NerdWallet.com (CA)

Lifestyle/News Feature Reporter - St. Joseph News-Press (MO)

OTHER NEWS & RESOURCES

Media 411: Avoid These Beginner Journalist Mistakes

The Q&A Team: 15 Tips for Creating the Perfect Headline

SPOTLIGHT: Mark Guarino, The Christian Science Monitor

EXPERT ALERTS:

Homebuyers Beware in a Flipper's Market Eric WorkmanVice President of Sales MACK CompaniesHomebuyers need to exercise extra caution when buying in a seller's market, but that is especially true when buying from a house flipper. Says Workman: "While a property's value is comprised of a number of factors, including the number of rooms, the home's condition and the sale price of neighboring homes, where many flippers get burned, is in calculating how much it will cost to make the home sale-ready and estimating a realistic sale price. This sometimes results in the flipper taking short-cuts to make the home appear in good condition when, in reality, costly repairs are still needed." For that reason, he says that before homebuyers engage in a bidding war, they need to find out if the home is really worth it. He also advises would-be buyers to spot the signs that the home is not in prime condition. Says Workman: "Look for subtle but severe signs of deterioration, like poorly patched cracks in the foundation, sloping floors or water stains. Homebuyers also need to do their homework to uncover potential issues. Find out who did the rehab work – was it a licensed contractor or an inexperienced do-it-yourselfer? Did they pull the necessary permits? And research if the home sat vacant before the flipper purchased it. If it endured several freeze and thaw seasons unattended, it may have suffered significant damage." Workman knows the process from both the flipper's and buyer's perspective, and can explain what homebuyers need to know before buying from a flipper. As vice president of sales at MACK Companies, he identifies foreclosed single-family homes to purchase, redevelop to new construction standards and then sell or rent. Media Contact: Julie Liedtke, [email protected]

Telltale Signs Your Office is a Health HazardJustin DixonPresidentSnyder Environmental"What are the telltale signs your office is a health hazard? Asbestos and poor indoor air quality (IAQ). The probabilities of asbestos in your workplace is very simple: If the structure was constructed prior to 1990, asbestos-containing materials may be present, although rare in '80s-model construction. Many common building materials and finish materials could possibly contain asbestos, so the only way to know with certainty is to have the building inspected for asbestos by a licensed firm. If leasing space, ask the building manager to view the asbestos inspection for the building, and if they don't have one, urge them to have this done. The inspection report will identify what materials contain asbestos. Company management can then alert employees to the material and its location, and instruct them to monitor the condition and report if the material becomes disturbed or damaged. According to EPA, indoor air is 70 times more polluted than the air outside. Common signs of poor workplace IAQ are water intrusion, odors and, most importantly, consistent or repetitive complaints of employees of respiratory irritation. Examples of poor indoor air would be mold growth, funny smells, and the presence of insects. Indoor air pollution can cause itching, watering eyes, worsened allergies and asthma, headache, nausea, dry throat and skin. If these signs are present, contact an environmental services. The fewer airborne pollutants the cleaner the air."Snyder Environmental, Inc., is a North Little Rock, Ark-based small business that specializes in the safe and compliant remediation of environmental issues such as asbestos, mold, lead paint removal, dust control and demolition for businesses.Website: http://www.snyderenvironmental.comMedia Contact: John Goodman, [email protected]

Protecting Your Company From Infiltration and TheftDavid SunTechnical Investigator and PresidentSunBlock Systems, Inc."Every company believes they are doing their best to protect their resources from infiltration or theft. However, as cybercrime grows exponentially, it's no longer likely that it's a teenager depositing a crackling skull-and-crossbones into your network as a company wide screensaver. Your company is subject to intellectual property theft, sabotage, and social protest. How will you most likely discover you've been compromised? The first clue will be a phone call from the FBI. Learn what happens when your company must recover from an infiltration or IP theft."Media Contact: Liora Farkovitz, [email protected]

Following are links to other news and resources we think you might find useful. If you have an item you think other reporters would be interested in and would like us to include in a future alert, please drop us a line at [email protected]

MEDIA 411: AVOID THESE BEGINNER JOURNALIST MISTAKES. If you're just starting out as a reporter, this list will provide you with links to some really great clips with information that can help you avoid making the mistakes many newbies make: http://prn.to/1hywJlC

THE Q&A TEAM: 15 TIPS FOR CREATING THE PERFECT HEADLINE. The first thing most readers notice is the headline of an article, blog post, press release, etc. It is important that the headline catches the reader's attention and persuades them to continue reading. We asked some of our ProfNet experts to share tips on creating the perfect headline. Here are the top 15 tips: http://prn.to/1p0sXHN

SPOTLIGHT: MARK GUARINO, THE CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR: This SPOTLIGHTbelongs to Mark Guarino, a staff writer with The Christian Science Monitor where he covers national news and culture out of Chicago. His byline has also run in Reuters, Salon, the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Sun-Times, New York Magazine, Agence France-Press (AFP), and other media outlets: http://prn.to/1dGQ7f6

PROFNET is an exclusive service of PR Newswire. To submit a request for experts: http://bit.ly/findexperts To search the ProfNet Connect experts database: http://www.profnetconnect.com To contact ProfNet by phone: +1-800-PROFNET, ext. 1 To share a thought on Expert Alerts: [email protected]

Without a clear strategy for cost control and an architecture designed with cloud services in mind, costs and operational performance can quickly get out of control. To avoid multiple architectural redesigns requires extensive thought and planning. Boundary (now part of BMC) launched a new public-facing multi-tenant high resolution monitoring service on Amazon AWS two years ago, facing challenges and learning best practices in the early days of the new service.
In his session at 19th Cloud Exp...

"We build IoT infrastructure products - when you have to integrate different devices, different systems and cloud you have to build an application to do that but we eliminate the need to build an application. Our products can integrate any device, any system, any cloud regardless of protocol," explained Peter Jung, Chief Product Officer at Pulzze Systems, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at @ThingsExpo, held November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

The cloud promises new levels of agility and cost-savings for Big Data, data warehousing and analytics. But it’s challenging to understand all the options – from IaaS and PaaS to newer services like HaaS (Hadoop as a Service) and BDaaS (Big Data as a Service). In her session at @BigDataExpo at @ThingsExpo, Hannah Smalltree, a director at Cazena, provided an educational overview of emerging “as-a-service” options for Big Data in the cloud. This is critical background for IT and data professionals...

Internet of @ThingsExpo has announced today that Chris Matthieu has been named tech chair of Internet of @ThingsExpo 2017 New York
The 7th Internet of @ThingsExpo will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Chris Matthieu is the co-founder and CTO of Octoblu, a revolutionary real-time IoT platform recently acquired by Citrix. Octoblu connects things, systems, people and clouds to a global mesh network allowing users to automate and control design flo...

You are moving to the Cloud. The question is not if, it’s when. Now that your competitors are in the cloud and lapping you, your “when” better hurry up and get here. But saying and doing are two different things.
In his session at @DevOpsSummit at 18th Cloud Expo, Robert Reeves, CTO of Datical, explained how DevOps can be your onramp to the cloud. By adopting simple, platform independent DevOps strategies, you can accelerate your move to the cloud.
Spoiler Alert: He also makes sure you don’t...

President Obama recently announced the launch of a new national awareness campaign to "encourage more Americans to move beyond passwords – adding an extra layer of security like a fingerprint or codes sent to your cellphone." The shift from single passwords to multi-factor authentication couldn’t be timelier or more strategic. This session will focus on why passwords alone are no longer effective, and why the time to act is now.
In his session at 19th Cloud Expo, Chris Webber, security strateg...

"We are an all-flash array storage provider but our focus has been on VM-aware storage specifically for virtualized applications," stated Dhiraj Sehgal of Tintri in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 19th Cloud Expo, held November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

Redis is not only the fastest database, but it has become the most popular among the new wave of applications running in containers. Redis speeds up just about every data interaction between your users or operational systems.
In his session at 18th Cloud Expo, Dave Nielsen, Developer Relations at Redis Labs, shared the functions and data structures used to solve everyday use cases that are driving Redis' popularity.

The WebRTC Summit New York, to be held June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY, announces that its Call for Papers is now open. Topics include all aspects of improving IT delivery by eliminating waste through automated business models leveraging cloud technologies. WebRTC Summit is co-located with 20th International Cloud Expo and @ThingsExpo. WebRTC is the future of browser-to-browser communications, and continues to make inroads into the traditional, difficult, plug-in web co...

Enterprise IT has been in the era of Hybrid Cloud for some time now. But it seems most conversations about Hybrid are focused on integrating AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google ECM into existing on-premises systems. Where is all the Private Cloud? What do technology providers need to do to make their offerings more compelling? How should enterprise IT executives and buyers define their focus, needs, and roadmap, and communicate that clearly to the providers?

Amazon has gradually rolled out parts of its IoT offerings, but these are just the tip of the iceberg. In addition to optimizing their backend AWS offerings, Amazon is laying the ground work to be a major force in IoT - especially in the connected home and office.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Chris Kocher, founder and managing director of Grey Heron, explained how Amazon is extending its reach to become a major force in IoT by building on its dominant cloud IoT platform, its Dash Button strat...

"We are a custom software development, engineering firm. We specialize in cloud applications from helping customers that have on-premise applications migrating to the cloud, to helping customers design brand new apps in the cloud. And we specialize in mobile apps," explained Peter Di Stefano, Vice President of Marketing at Impiger Technologies, in this SYS-CON.tv interview at 19th Cloud Expo, held November 1-3, 2016, at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, CA.

Complete Internet of Things (IoT) embedded device security is not just about the device but involves the entire product’s identity, data and control integrity, and services traversing the cloud. A device can no longer be looked at as an island; it is a part of a system. In fact, given the cross-domain interactions enabled by IoT it could be a part of many systems. Also, depending on where the device is deployed, for example, in the office building versus a factory floor or oil field, security ha...

In addition to all the benefits, IoT is also bringing new kind of customer experience challenges - cars that unlock themselves, thermostats turning houses into saunas and baby video monitors broadcasting over the internet. This list can only increase because while IoT services should be intuitive and simple to use, the delivery ecosystem is a myriad of potential problems as IoT explodes complexity. So finding a performance issue is like finding the proverbial needle in the haystack.

The idea of comparing data in motion (at the sensor level) to data at rest (in a Big Data server warehouse) with predictive analytics in the cloud is very appealing to the industrial IoT sector. The problem Big Data vendors have, however, is access to that data in motion at the sensor location.
In his session at @ThingsExpo, Scott Allen, CMO of FreeWave, discussed how as IoT is increasingly adopted by industrial markets, there is going to be an increased demand for sensor data from the outermos...

The holiday season is nearly upon us (I’ve already heard Christmas songs being played…really?) and retailers are usually the big winners during the holiday season. However, leading retailers are already thinking beyond the current holiday season, and not just from marketing and merchandising perspectives. These leading retailers are considering how this holiday season – and the resulting wealth of...

I was on a high-rise construction site 34-floors above the city. I was talking to the construction crew when a fight broke out. There was an explosion and the floor collapsed. I removed the virtual reality (VR) goggles and laughed. It was so real. The VR solutions provided an incredible experience, almost like being there. As good as my experience was, it was not reality. It was a controlled pre-p...

The cloud promises new levels of agility and cost-savings for Big Data, data warehousing and analytics. But it’s challenging to understand all the options – from IaaS and PaaS to newer services like HaaS (Hadoop as a Service) and BDaaS (Big Data as a Service). In her session at @BigDataExpo at @ThingsExpo, Hannah Smalltree, a director at Cazena, provided an educational overview of emerging “as-a-s...

Internet of @ThingsExpo has announced today that Chris Matthieu has been named tech chair of Internet of @ThingsExpo 2017 New York
The 7th Internet of @ThingsExpo will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
Chris Matthieu is the co-founder and CTO of Octoblu, a revolutionary real-time IoT platform recently acquired by Citrix. Octoblu connects things, s...

As we enter the final week before the 19th International Cloud Expo | @ThingsExpo in Santa Clara, CA, it's time for me to reflect on six big topics that will be important during the show. Hybrid Cloud: This general-purpose term seems to provide a comfort zone for many enterprise IT managers. It sounds reassuring to be able to work with one of the major public-cloud providers like AWS or Microsoft ...

When was the last time you’ve ever heard anyone say “IT Applications & Operations”? Frankly, in my 30+ year career in IT, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard anyone use this term. The typical term we hear is IT Infrastructure & Operations. These two go together like Peanut Butter and Jelly, which tells us a lot about how we view the field of IT. For those that may not be familiar with the role of IT ...

Enterprise IT has been in the era of Hybrid Cloud for some time now. But it seems most conversations about Hybrid are focused on integrating AWS, Microsoft Azure, or Google ECM into existing on-premises systems. Where is all the Private Cloud? What do technology providers need to do to make their offerings more compelling? How should enterprise IT executives and buyers define their focus, needs, a...

Multiple agencies across the U.S. government are paying closer attention to the software they are buying. More specifically, they want to know what open source and third party components were used to build the software applications. The report notes:
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wants to know what open source components are being used in medical devices.

2016 brought about more cyberattacks than we thought possible, especially involving ransomware, and we definitely won't see that trend breaking stride in 2017. By next year, we expect every single adult in the US will know a blood relative that has had their identity stolen - the Internal Revenue Service reported that 2.7 million people had their identities stolen in 2014 and according to TransUni...

I’m a huge fan of open source DevOps tools. I’m also a huge fan of scaling open source tools for the enterprise. But having talked with my fair share of companies over the years, one important thing I’ve learned is that you can’t scale your release process using open source tools alone. They simply require too much scripting and maintenance when used that way. Scripting may be fine for smaller org...

Between 2005 and 2020, data volumes will grow by a factor of 300 – enough data to stack CDs from the earth to the moon 162 times. This has come to be known as the ‘big data’ phenomenon. Unfortunately, traditional approaches to handling, storing and analyzing data aren’t adequate at this scale: they’re too costly, slow and physically cumbersome to keep up. Fortunately, in response a new breed of te...

In his general session at 19th Cloud Expo, Manish Dixit, VP of Product and Engineering at Dice, discussed how Dice leverages data insights and tools to help both tech professionals and recruiters better understand how skills relate to each other and which skills are in high demand using interactive visualizations and salary indicator tools to maximize earning potential.
Manish Dixit is VP of Pr...

For large enterprise organizations, it can be next-to-impossible to identify attacks and act to mitigate them in good time. That’s one of the reasons executives often discover security breaches when an external researcher — or worse, a journalist — gets in touch to ask why hundreds of millions of logins for their company’s services are freely available on hacker forums.
The huge volume of incomin...

Monitoring of Docker environments is challenging. Why? Because each container typically runs a single process, has its own environment, utilizes virtual networks, or has various methods of managing storage. Traditional monitoring solutions take metrics from each server and applications they run. These servers and applications running on them are typically very static, with very long uptimes. Docke...

Logs are continuous digital records of events generated by all components of your software stack – and they’re everywhere – your networks, servers, applications, containers and cloud infrastructure just to name a few. The data logs provide are like an X-ray for your IT infrastructure. Without logs, this lack of visibility creates operational challenges for managing modern applications that drive t...

@DevOpsSummit taking place June 6-8, 2017 at Javits Center, New York City, is co-located with the 20th International Cloud Expo and will feature technical sessions from a rock star conference faculty and the leading industry players in the world. @DevOpsSummit at Cloud Expo New York Call for Papers is now open.

The 20th International Cloud Expo has announced that its Call for Papers is open. Cloud Expo, to be held June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, brings together Cloud Computing, Big Data, Internet of Things, DevOps, Containers, Microservices and WebRTC to one location.
With cloud computing driving a higher percentage of enterprise IT budgets every year, it becomes increasingly impo...

Modern organizations typically use several IT tools to monitor their applications, networks and other IT components in real time. Unfortunately, this leads to independent data islands, which creates a one-dimensional view of IT. In order to make strategic decisions, organizations need an IT operational analytics tool to analyze data from multiple sources, spot trends and make better decisions.

The IoT continued its toddler-like growth and stumbles in 2016. Here are five trends to look for in 2017 as the IoT enters its adolescence and how to benefit from them.
1. Ecosystems begin to determine winners and losers
Previously these were nice in-the-future concerns; now they will really count. Filling out a whole product value proposition through partnerships has repeatedly proven its impo...

Cloud Expo, Inc. has announced today that Andi Mann returns to 'DevOps at Cloud Expo 2017' as Conference Chair
The @DevOpsSummit at Cloud Expo will take place on June 6-8, 2017, at the Javits Center in New York City, NY.
"DevOps is set to be one of the most profound disruptions to hit IT in decades," said Andi Mann. "It is a natural extension of cloud computing, and I have seen both firsthand an...

Cloud computing budgets worldwide are reaching into the hundreds of billions of dollars, and no organization can survive long without some sort of cloud migration strategy. Each month brings new announcements, use cases, and success stories.